The robot leader King is leading a war against humanity. He plans to capture data from all the fighting robots he can find. He already ransacked Dr. Wily's lab and recruited two of his Mega Man 8 Robot Masters. With the other six robot masters, he leads a vicious assault against the robot museum, hoping to find more data.

Bag of Spilling: Mega Man lost the ability to swim from Mega Man 8. A few items from the eighth game, too, have been removed in this journey that were there.

Bait-and-Switch Boss: King Stage 1's boss, Atetemino Proto, a bagworm robot. At first, there is an annoying, trolling chimp named Monking A that deceptively looks like the boss, but shooting it only causes a new Monking A to respawn. Standing on a platform attached to a pulley system weights it down and dredges up Atetemino Proto from under the lava so you can open fire on its head.

Many of the data CDs have rather nonsensical translations. For example, Pharaoh Man's Bad Point is translated as "Too nice to women" when it was originally "Weak to Beautiful Women", while Dr. Light's Bad Point is (rather infamously) a simple, contextless "Douchie" (which was supposed to be "naive").

Also from the same port is the instruction manual. Auto is referred to by his Japanese name, Lightot, and "Wily" is misspelled "Wiley" as in the third game.

The intro stage is one big Continuity Cavalcade of previous games in the series. There's a fire portion reminiscent of Fire Man's stage from 1, hallways filled with drilling Moles like in Metal Man's stage from Mega Man 2, a rainy segment similar to Toad Man's in Mega Man 4, a ship with rising and falling water from Blizzard Man's stage in Mega Man 6, and finally at the end you fight a toned-down version of the Green Devil from 8.

The last level has a Boss Rush as usual, but the bosses are fought sequentially with platforming sections in-between — just like the first game.

Chest Monster: There are chests throughout the game that contain power-ups or CDs, but some will come to life when shot and are very aggressive.

Combining Mecha: The three minibosses of King 2, Ground Tank, Air Tank, and King, combine to form the boss of the level.

Astro Man and Tengu Man are bosses from Mega Man 8, although their attacks and patterns (and weapons) changed.

King uses the Gemini Laser from Mega Man 3 during the fight with him. Luckily, it doesn't hit as hard.

Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Just like in Mega Man X, Bass can dash by pressing the dedicated dash button, or by double tapping forward. The Game Boy Advance port doesn't have a button, so you must double tap. That split second will result in countless mistakes and deaths. Thankfully, Capcom would later remap the dash to Down + Jump in Mega Man 10, the same command for Mega Man and Proto Man's sliding.

Demoted to Extra: So where was Proto Man in all of this? He was fighting King at the robot museum where he got chopped in half. He got repaired just in time to exhaust himself by destroying King's shield and then snuck into Dr. Wily's lab to destroy all the data he had on King. But he's not playable. This did end up resulting in at least a couple of rumors that made the rounds claiming that Proto Man could be unlocked as a playable character.

Denial of Diagonal Attack: Mega Man still has this problem. Bass doesn't. The Magic Card can be fired upward and the Ice Wall slides along the ground, though. The Wave Burner covers the floor and can destroy some otherwise invincible ground enemies.

Dig Attack: Ground Man can sometimes go into the ceiling of the cave he's in and attack you with large drills from above.

Divergent Character Evolution: In Bass' previous appearances (as well as his playable stint in The Power Battle and The Power Fighters), the Bass Buster functioned identically to the Mega Buster. To differentiate Bass from Mega Man (and make things fair considering his vastly superior mobility), his Buster was drastically altered, which stuck for Rockman & Forte: Challenger from the Future and Mega Man 10.

Fragile Speedster: Bass has this handicap in contrast to Mega Man. Bass has the advantage of a double jump, a dash move, and the ability to shoot diagonally out of the starting gate. But as a tradeoff, he can't shoot while running (although he can while jumping), he takes twice as much damage, and his rapid-fire Bass Buster can't shoot through walls and is very weak against bosses.

Gotta Catch Them All: There are 100 data CDs, holding information about many characters and robot masters.

Hijacked by Ganon: King eventually realizes his master and creator, Dr. Wily, lied to him about the nature of humanity. At this point, the good doctor shows up, ups King's brainwashing levels, and retreats to his fortress.

Hopeless Boss Fight: King's Tower Shield is indestructible. The first phase of the fight involves waiting him out and dodging his attacks. Finally, Proto Man shows up and destroys the shield to give you a fighting chance.

It's still considered part of the series, since it shows up in Mega Man 9's ending montage of all of Wily's previous defeats (while, for example, the Game Boy games do not).

Infinity +1 Sword: For Bass, the S. Buster part. Available after beating six bosses, it is effectively a souped up version of the C. Attack part (which increases your attack power when your health is low) that doubles the Bass Buster's attack power across the board as long as it's equipped. This even counts for bosses, letting you do two points of damage instead of one and outright obsoleting a couple of weaknesses (Astro Man and Dynamo Man's in particular). The closest thing that Mega Man has to an I+1 is the classic High Speed Charge, which, on top of what it says it does (reduce the amount of time needed for a charged shot), it doesn't take up your equipped part slot, so you can use it with an equipped part like the S. Armor to bulk up on defense.

Invulnerable Attack: Equip the Tengu Blade and you can slide or dash through everything. Including Magic Man. Lightning Bolt is also this.

The boss of the first fortress stage. You must balance yourself on a pulley with the boss above an acid pit. Once your side is low enough, the boss will emerge and you can attack it. When you kill the boss, the platform you are on will sink instantly, and if you don't jump to safety, then you will burn in the pit as the boss dies. Strange, because during the fight itself, you will take damage instead.

Mighty Glacier: Mega Man is this to Bass. He moves slow as molasses compared to the double jump and dash-equipped Bass, and can only shoot left or right. But his chargeable Mega Buster packs more of a wallop than the Bass Buster and can shoot through walls, and he's more resilient to damage.

Mix and Match: Pirate Man is both an aquatic- and explosive-themed Robot Master. Burner Man, the fire boss, takes place in a jungle.

More Dakka Bass fires a rapid fire stream of bullets when holding the fire button.

Most of the boss fights outside of Green Devil and Cold Man are grueling to fight, especially if you fight them without their weakness. Dynamo Man is just a sample of how cruel the game can get — besides his annoying attack pattern, he can heal himself on a whim, and attack you while he's still healing. And if you do get his health low enough, he'll pull a Desperation Attack on you that is very hard to dodge. Unless you have super reflexes and a lot of patience with how often he regenerates, the battle will really feel like a Luck-Based Mission.

The second Wily level really takes the cake; you have to fight three bosses in a row, and the third one has a whopping three forms.

The Game Boy Advance port unwittingly makes playing as Bass, who already suffers from taking more damage than Mega Man and a weaker arm cannon, even harder due to his dash move not having a button mapped to it—that slight split second difference between the SNES dash button and the GBA "Tap left/right twice" will give you a lot of grief.

Bass: So, you intended to use King to take care of me, did you? You dirty son of a bitch!

Pyro Maniac: Burner Man, if his concept art◊ is any indication. You also fight him in a forest. Apparently King tricked him into believing that he must burn a forest daily or a bomb inside him will explode.

Right Makes Might: Proto Man gives Bass a lecture during his ending that is pretty much this. He says that Mega Man will always be the better fighter because he fights for a just cause, while Bass only fights to satisfy his ego.

Sequel Difficulty Spike: Mega Man 8 had checkpoints, simple boss fights, loads of extra lives, and had no penalty when you get a game over. It was the easiest game in the franchise. And then came this game.

This Is a Drill: Ground Man uses the Spread Drill, which can bisect twice to cover a lot of room. He will also drill into the ceiling, dig above you, and then drop a MASSIVE drill from above on you. He can even transform into a Drill Tank.

Underground Monkey: Infamously, the Wily Machine and Capsule here are basically the same ones from 8, with a few aesthetic changes and new attacks.

Warmup Boss: And it's the Green Devil, of all things. Thankfully, he doesn't split up this time round, and just stands there during the whole battle.

Cold Man, one of the first Robot Masters you fight, is also the easiest of them in the game. The game only gets harder from then on out.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dynamo Man's resentment of humanity and primary motive for aiding King's army is that his unstable electromagnetic force field (courtesy of King tampering with him) makes it lethal for anyone to get close to him. As a result, the robot whose former job was giving tours of a power plant to schoolchildren is forced to live in solitude.

Xanatos Gambit: Dr. Wily had his bases covered; either Mega Man would perish or King would destroy Bass and grow stronger, or Bass would destroy King and grow stronger. Or Wily would collect all of the robot data King collected and start working on a King Mk II. Bass' ending shows Proto Man ruined the last outcome.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy